Omon Ra (17 page)

BOOK: Omon Ra

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Through the film of my tears the earth was blurred and indistinct, and it
seemed to be suspended in a yellowish void; I watched its surface draw closer from out
of this void as I squirmed my way towards it, until the walls that were pressing in on
me parted and the brown tiles of the floor flew up to meet me.

•

“Hey you, mister!” I opened my eyes. A woman in a dirty
blue smock was bending over me; a bucket stood on the floor beside her, and she had a
mop in her hand.

“Feeling bad, are you? What d’you want here?”

I looked around me—in the wall opposite me there was a small brown
door. Beside it hung a calendar with a big photograph of the earth and the words
“For Peace in Space!” I was lying in a short corridor with blue-painted
walls, with three or four doors close by. Looking up, I saw the black opening of a
ventilation shaft in the wall opposite the calendar.

“Eh?” I asked.

“I said, you drunk, are you?”

Supporting myself against the wall, I got to my feet and set off along the
corridor.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” the woman said,
and turned me round roughly. I set off in the opposite direction. Around the corner
there was a steep staircase leading upwards, which ended in a wooden door. Beyond the
door there was an indistinct buzz of noise.

“Go on,” said the woman, pushing me from behind.

I walked up the steps and then looked round—she was watching me
carefully from the bottom of the stairs. I pushed the door and found myself standing in
a dark niche behind several people in civilian clothes. They took no notice of me. There
was a distant rumbling sound, gradually growing louder. Glancing sideways, I read an
inscription in bronze letters—
LENIN LIBRARY
.

The thought suddenly hit me—earth!

I stepped out of the cubbyhole under the stairs and staggered slowly along
the metro platform towards the large mirror at its far end. Above the mirror menacing
orange digits spelled out the time, informing me that it was not yet evening but time
was getting on and the previous train had passed through just over four minutes ago. The
face of a young man with stubble that hadn’t seen a razor in ages was staring at
me out of the mirror; his eyes were inflamed and his hair was a tangled mess. He was
wearing a dirty black padded jacket, smeared in places with whitewash, and he looked as
though he’d spent last night far from a bed.

A policeman with a small moustache who was striding up and down the hall
began giving me the eye, and when a train arrived and the doors opened, I stepped in
through the opening without a second thought. The doors closed,
and the train carried me off into a new life. The flight continues, I thought. Half the
lamps in the moonwalker weren’t working, which sort of soured the light. I sat
down; the woman beside me automatically squeezed her legs together, moved away from me,
and set her string shopping bag in the space between us. From the corner of my eye I
noticed a box of macaroni stars and the sad, small shape of a frozen chicken.

•

I had to decide where to go. I looked up at the metro diagram on the
wall beside the emergency-stop handle, and began to work out where exactly on the red
line I was.

Moscow, 1992

Translation copyright ©
1994 by Andrew Bromfield

Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Giroux

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper,
magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
Publisher.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited

First published clothbound in 1996 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. First
published paperbound in 1998 as New Directions Paperbook 851.

The excerpt from an untitled poem by Vladimir Nabokov on page 128 is
reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pelevin, Viktor.

[Omon Ra. English]

Omon Ra/Victor Pelevin; translated from the Russian by

Andrew Bromfield.

p. cm.

Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996.

eISBN 978-0-8112-2124-5

Andrew.